Decrease in taxpayer compliance costs with the establishment of Madagascar RA's new national call centre

PRETORIA – Cost-effective tax collection prioritises voluntary taxpayer compliance through clear tax laws. Additionally, Madagascar Revenue Authority (MRA) is planning to improve its customer relationship management system, through increased use of social networks, an interactive website and a hotline to respond to taxpayer queries/calls in real time. These different contact channels are important steps in this process intended to inform and assist users of the public service.

The establishment of a call center, favoring users who need a quick response without traveling and wishing for direct contact with an official of the administration, constitutes additional reforms by the MRA to better serve its taxpayers. Moreover, this measure is part of the recommendations of Madagascar's technical and financial partners to improve domestic revenue mobilization.

Having a national call centre to address taxpayer complaints, queries and information is in line with international best practice as per the Tax Administration Diagnostic Assessment Tool (TADAT), and therefore a clear step in the right direction for Madagascar.

ATAF is providing technical support to the MRA to put this call centre in place. The centre will be freely available to all taxpayers, and will provide guidance, responses, reminders related to key tax payment deadlines all focusing on aiding them to meet their tax obligations while enjoying their rights. On the other hand this affords Madagascar an opportunity to modernise its tax administration, improve outreach to taxpayers with the ultimate goal of improving efficiency.

The specific objective of the ATAF technical assistance is to support the MRA in the process of setting up a call center system that meets the ISO standard: study and design, choice of the solution to be adopted, acquisition of equipment, installation, training, and assistance at the start of operations.

To effectively develop the framework for establishing a national call centre the experts visited 14 taxpayer offices and two regional business centres as a benchmark. As part of the data collection process several experienced MRA officials were interviewed to gain a better understanding of the kinds of requests for information, queries or complaints the tax offices receive and the time taken to resolve the issues, address complaints or provide the requested taxpayer information. 

ATAF’s technical support to Madagascar includes setting up peer to peer learning sessions with member revenue administrations that have established, functional and effective call centres to understand the structure, financial feasibility, challenges and services that are provided through the call centre. This being the first ATAF TA support of its nature, it is envisaged that its success will help in providing the impetus to provide the same function to other countries with similar objectives

The objective of ATAF’s TA is to enhance the effectiveness of member revenue administrations through strengthening the capacity in the member states.